


Solid and Real and There

by IvyPane



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Destiel - Freeform, Drabble, Fluff, M/M, One-Shot, post-8x19
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-30
Updated: 2013-10-30
Packaged: 2017-12-30 23:46:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1024815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IvyPane/pseuds/IvyPane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean is awoken by the rustling of familiar feathers, which send him in an aimless spiral of thoughts about his angel, Castiel. Written as a painkiller for 8x17, Goodbye Stranger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Solid and Real and There

Dean woke to what he could have sworn was the fluttering of angel wings.

He was dog-tired, hurting all over from another hunt, hurting inside from another loss of a friend – Benny, even Benny had left him, though Dean supposed it was only fair after he had abandoned Benny himself. Despite his weariness and the looming prospect of dawn and work, more work, always work, that sound, the sound of angel feathers sifting through the wind, commanding and directing it, was the only thing that could wake him better than any alarm.

It must be a dream - as always, that's his first thought. He's had dreams like it before, he's sure; when Cas had apparently been killed by Leviathan, nightmares weren't the only visions haunting Dean's head. He barely remembered the good dreams involving the angel – all the bad that followed overwhelmed them – but what he does know for sure is that they were full of warmth and light and something very, very soft. Anything he does remember follows him unfailingly; a blue-eyed stare, burning like a thousand foreign skies, a small smile, fragile as a snowdrop dancing on a thin thread of air, a touch on the shoulder like a feather he feels sloughing through his skin, cutting it with closeness. This sound isn't like that; it's familiar, yes, it's musical and uplifting as always, it makes his chest ache again, hard enough to warrant internal bleeding, he feels, but the sound is solid, it's real, it's there.

His eyelids feel like lead when he tries to lift them but he persists, clinging to the frail, fleeting belief that Castiel has somehow, fantastically, returned, if only for a moment. The sound won't leave the inside of his head, humming through his skull and brain tissue, making him hope against his own reason. Every nerve jumps to drowsy attention within an instant, a thousand words scramble for room as he thinks of what he could possibly say, his eyes finally, painstakingly open...

Blinking, Dean picks out the usual outlines of his dark room; nothing out of place. Nothing out of place, and yet there, yes, right there, not out of place but not there before either, he'd never mistake it; Castiel's coat hanging on the hook, the material a lighter patch than the surrounding gloom of Dean's own jackets.

He doesn't even notice how he gets out of bed and goes to it, only vaguely aware of how his bare feet make the floor rustle sleepily and how cool the air feels without the warmth of the fallen-away duvet. He runs disbelieving fingers down the collar, out across the shoulders, holds up the sleeves as if Castiel's silhouette is hanging off a crucifix...

He presses the material to his face, to his lips, inhaling, kissing the soft-worn cuffs. He doesn't care he's acting ridiculous; not here, not now, not on the brink of sleep and wakefulness; there is no shame to be found in this state, to his own dull surprise.  
It makes him sad, suddenly, the appearance of this coat, and with a start he realises why – the last time this coat was in his possession minus the angel who ought to be in it was exactly when Castiel was supposed to have been ripped to shreds by Leviathan. From bewilderment and horror, his still half-asleep mind almost allows him a sob, but he holds it back and lifts the coat off the hook instead, as carefully as if it might turn to dust in his very hands like everything and everyone else he touches.

He hugs it. It's a poor substitute for the flesh and blood of Castiel's vessel - the rustling of it isn't enough like his whispers, much too vague to be the beautiful words he carves out of his breath, but Dean's addled imagination makes him picture Cas's wings rustling just like this instead. He nestles into it, wrapping around it, lacing through it with his soul, trying to absorb the lingering presence in it that belongs to Castiel. It feels like Dean supposes a soul itself must feel, or perhaps and angel’s Grace: distantly warm yet immediately cold, soft and light with rough-hewn stitches coming apart at the seams. Too much of it is there yet not enough is present, especially when you try to physically hold it, adore it. One sleeve hangs right over the handprint burned into Dean's shoulder, as if the lifeless piece of cloth has absorbed its owners will and knows who Dean is by touch.

Paper rustles within the garment, buckling under the pressure of Dean's desperate hands, heaving chest, questing face. The crinkle is louder, crisper than the leaf-like sounds of the material, and Dean instantly reaches into one of the trench-like trench coat pockets. He pulls out a luminescently white rectangle of paper, new, only recently written on. A note; not something Cas keeps on him usually, or it'd be dog-eared, Dean finds himself thinking. Somehow, the information seems ridiculously significant to him in that moment.

He opens it carefully, the coat still wrapped in his arms, a representation of the angel; the closest thing to him he has right now.

"Dean," it began. Dean’s heart lodged momentarily somewhere between his chest and his mouth, remembering the shape of Castiel's lips whenever he said his name. He almost didn’t feel bad for thinking that, – bloody hell – it took his breath away.  
"I wanted to check if you were alright." The handwriting was calm, neat, as if Castiel knew exactly what he wanted to write. "Now you know I'm alright too."

Underneath that, almost in a different handwriting – a messy, hurried slant – was another short message, an after-thought: "You look cold, even under all your blankets. Keep this safe for me, please. You did it well last time."

A salty drop of water fell from somewhere and smeared the ink. The bottom of the page was signed, needlessly, as if Dean didn't know every line of this coat and every lace of Castiel's smell within its stitches.

"See you; I promise.

Cas."

Dean folded the note with unsteady fingers – A hunter with unsteady fingers, no hunter after all, his mind hissed – and put it on his table, pinning it there with his gaze, waiting for the world to disprove its existence. Nothing came and took it away, no flash of lightning set it on fire, no wind carried it off into an oblivious, uncaring sky. Dean returned to his bed, still cradling the coat, his own little piece of his guardian angel.

The material sung against his bare skin as he spread it over his chest instead of the duvet, torso completely covered by the slide of silky, parachute-like underlining. He absently stroked the belt niched at the waist which Castiel never did up. His slowed, sleep-deprived brain pointed him in the direction of Cas's other clothes; his tie, and his suit, and his shirt, and beneath it all, Castiel, all Castiel, only Castiel-

But the tie had been lovely – silky and thin like he thought the angel himself would be – as he had straightened it for Castiel, pads of his fingers feeling the shift of skin travel through the shirt collar as Castiel swallowed uneasily at the prospect of lying. Dean's slack mouth quirked involuntarily through his almost-sleep. So long ago... The angel had managed to hold up his FBI badge upside down, and Dean had leaned across him, feeling the heat emanating from Castiel's chest with the back of his arm as he flipped the badge the right way up with a disbelieving expression.

Dean didn't know up from down himself anymore, not really, not there through this fog and the smell of Castiel's skin from the coat and-

That closeness, a damning closeness that never seemed to vanish, he was all too aware of it, much more aware than he cared to let on. When Cas seemed to die right in front of him and Bobby, Bobby said he wasn't breathing but Dean replied "Maybe angels don't need to breathe?" Dear Lord; as if he didn't know. As if he didn't feel every breath Castiel took like a ghost passing straight through his body, as if he didn't catch their lungs syncing whenever they were side by side.

Breathing; was he imagining breathing? That same ghost was upon him even on the edge of sleep, caressing his body with warmth. Everywhere was warm; over his heart, then over the scar tissue of Castiel's handprint, then over his head, making his hair fall differently, then over his face. A small pressure on his forehead; a kiss from the ghost, another loathed, needed, thirsted-for breath, more a sigh. It was unnervingly, wonderfully solid and real and there. "Sleep well, Dean." Castiel said; a low, rough whisper right next to him, inside him, touching him with its tendrils, cupping Dean's face with its care and gentleness.

Dean's eyes didn't open quickly enough again. He sat up, the coat piling into his lap, head swimming from tiredness and confusion and, most of all, a blinding need, a need... For what? His only answer was yet another fluttering of wings, leaving behind nothing but the light-brown, rustling cloth shadow of the angel who had wanted to bring him peaceful sleep and instead brought him a head aching with questions and a heart aching with want. “Cas… Cas…” That was Dean’s only prayer anymore, the only prayer that graced his dry mouth as he sat still a moment before falling back on his pillow, feeling hollow.

Dean's last thought before he finally fell into the oblivion of a dream was whether or not he dreamt the rest of it too.


End file.
